How to delete the contents of a folder?

import os, shutil
folder = '/path/to/folder'
for filename in os.listdir(folder):
    file_path = os.path.join(folder, filename)
    try:
        if os.path.isfile(file_path) or os.path.islink(file_path):
            os.unlink(file_path)
        elif os.path.isdir(file_path):
            shutil.rmtree(file_path)
    except Exception as e:
        print('Failed to delete %s. Reason: %s' % (file_path, e))

You can delete the folder itself, as well as all its contents, using shutil.rmtree:

import shutil
shutil.rmtree('/path/to/folder')

shutil.rmtree(path, ignore_errors=False, onerror=None)

Delete an entire directory tree; path must point to a directory (but not a symbolic link to a directory). If ignore_errors is true, errors resulting from failed removals will be ignored; if false or omitted, such errors are handled by calling a handler specified by onerror or, if that is omitted, they raise an exception.

Expanding on mhawke's answer this is what I've implemented. It removes all the content of a folder but not the folder itself. Tested on Linux with files, folders and symbolic links, should work on Windows as well.

import os
import shutil

for root, dirs, files in os.walk('/path/to/folder'):
    for f in files:
        os.unlink(os.path.join(root, f))
    for d in dirs:
        shutil.rmtree(os.path.join(root, d))

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the awesome pathlib to do this job.

If you only want to remove files in a directory it can be a oneliner

from pathlib import Path

[f.unlink() for f in Path("/path/to/folder").glob("*") if f.is_file()] 

To also recursively remove directories you can write something like this:

from pathlib import Path
from shutil import rmtree

for path in Path("/path/to/folder").glob("**/*"):
    if path.is_file():
        path.unlink()
    elif path.is_dir():
        rmtree(path)

As a oneliner:

import os

# Python 2.7
map( os.unlink, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) )

# Python 3+
list( map( os.unlink, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) ) )

A more robust solution accounting for files and directories as well would be (2.7):

def rm(f):
    if os.path.isdir(f): return os.rmdir(f)
    if os.path.isfile(f): return os.unlink(f)
    raise TypeError, 'must be either file or directory'

map( rm, (os.path.join( mydir,f) for f in os.listdir(mydir)) )

To delete all the files inside the directory as well as its sub-directories, without removing the folders themselves, simply do this:

import os
mypath = "my_folder" #Enter your path here
for root, dirs, files in os.walk(mypath, topdown=False):
    for file in files:
        os.remove(os.path.join(root, file))

    # Add this block to remove folders
    for dir in dirs:
        os.rmdir(os.path.join(root, dir))

# Add this line to remove the root folder at the end
os.rmdir(mypath)

To delete all files inside a folder a I use:

import os
for i in os.listdir():
    os.remove(i)

You might be better off using os.walk() for this.

os.listdir() doesn't distinguish files from directories and you will quickly get into trouble trying to unlink these. There is a good example of using os.walk() to recursively remove a directory here, and hints on how to adapt it to your circumstances.

If you are using a *nix system, why not leverage the system command?

import os
path = 'folder/to/clean'
os.system('rm -rf %s/*' % path)

I had to remove files from 3 separate folders inside a single parent directory:

directory
   folderA
      file1
   folderB
      file2
   folderC
      file3

This simple code did the trick for me: (I'm on Unix)

import os
import glob

folders = glob.glob('./path/to/parentdir/*')
for fo in folders:
  file = glob.glob(f'{fo}/*')
  for f in file:
    os.remove(f)

Hope this helps.

Well, I think this code is working. It will not delete the folder and you can use this code to delete files having the particular extension.

import os
import glob

files = glob.glob(r'path/*')
for items in files:
    os.remove(items)

Pretty intuitive way of doing it:

import shutil, os


def remove_folder_contents(path):
    shutil.rmtree(path)
    os.makedirs(path)


remove_folder_contents('/path/to/folder')

Use the method bellow to remove the contents of a directory, not the directory itself:

import os
import shutil

def remove_contents(path):
    for c in os.listdir(path):
        full_path = os.path.join(path, c)
        if os.path.isfile(full_path):
            os.remove(full_path)
        else:
            shutil.rmtree(full_path)

use this function

import glob

def truncate(path):
    files = glob.glob(path+'/*.*')
    for f in files:
        os.remove(f)

truncate('/my/path')

the easiest way to delete all files in a folder/remove all files

import os
files = os.listdir(yourFilePath)
for f in files:
    os.remove(yourFilePath + f)